Misadventures of the Hours and Afterhours

Note: It’s been exactly a month since I’ve seen this concert. I had no good reason to delay this post for so long and as such I’m not 100% sure if the tracklist posted is correct. But it should be.

When I heard ayaka would go on hiatus three years ago, I was close to tears. While my primary concern was for ayaka’s health, I was also upset because I thought I would never to be able to see ayaka. When I found out that the dates of my internship in Japan would coincide with that she would be touring, I knew I had to be there no matter what.

I nearly cried when ayaka first started singing “The Beginning” because of the “OMG I’m actually here and that’s actually her I’m seeing with my own eyes, not through a screen”. However, I stayed on that on the edge of tears mood throughout the entire show because of how good ayaka was. Continue reading →

I`m starting to increasingly take pleasure in my nightly walks. Not gonna lie, the past few days have been somewhat tough for me. There is a DVD at work that I`m trying to put together but thanks to my screw-ups I have to keep on starting over. I lost something very, very precious to me. A lack of news from certain places has put me in a constant state of anxiousness. And on top of it all, I have been leaving work at around 9PM every day (for the records, my official hours are 9AM – 5:30 PM). That`s why my nightly walks are so essential. After 11 hours in a chair, my back starts aching and I need to relearn how to walk. Also Tokyo is a really wonderful city for walking. While most of the stores close around 8PM, the trains don’t stop running until 12PM. I find this time period to be a perfect time for walking. There are people out and about but they aren`t gathered in impassible clumps.

When I was about eight or nine, I held a Disneyland pass for a couple of years. Dragging my dad who thankfully has the patience of saint, I would go to Disneyland about every other week, partly because I was going through a Disney phase and partly because I had no actual friends. I have also been to Disney World twice. Thus, I consider myself rather well-versed in Disney parks. While Disney Sea definitely has a lot of the “typical” Disney trademarks, it manages to rock it`s own unique marine steampunk aesthetic. Also there`s curry popcorn. From now on, curry is the only acceptable flavor of popcorn.

I never thought I`d ever step foot in one of those AKB48 cafes. Peer at it from the outside, yes. Make fun of it with my friends while secretly taking a photo from afar, yes. But spending over two hours in the super special private reserved room with crazy AKB48 Wasamin (one of the members of the girl band) fans? Yeah, no.

….because at this point I’m asking Shibuya and Harajuku to take my wallet, chew it up, and spit out useless 1 yen coins. I like to think of myself as thrifty person. I had been doing such a good job in the few days; on average, I had been spending half of my daily food budget (it’s $25 for all one of you who is curious). However, everything has changed ever since I stepped into Shibuya. At first, I thought it was the wine. But after visiting Harajuku sober on a Friday night, I realized I’m just weak.

It’s hard to remember sometimes but I’m not here in Tokyo for a two month vacation but an internship. Part of the reason why it’s so hard to forget is that I’m really enjoying my internship so far. By like a lot. More than I enjoyed any class at college, to be honest. I don’t know what that says about me.

Ever since I got here, I haven’t been in my room all that much. It’s partly because my room is a shithole. My refrigerator broke down in two days and bugs have been crawling out from behind it. But it’s also partly because I simply have no time. I have work for 9:00AM – 5:30PM and so far I have been meeting friends afterwards. Tokyo is wonderful and I have been making up for months of being a hermit in snowy Maine.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the trains. I say train and not subway because I truthfully have not been on the subway so far. I’m tired so I’m just going to list a couple of random thoughts/observations about the trains here.

On Sunday, I was able to follow The Lord’s commandments and take a day of rest because I had finished moving in. Unfortunately I don’t think anything I did would be particularly considered “holy”. Then again, the creator of AKB48 and the heads of those anime figure companies could probably buy out heaven anyways.

I’ve been in Japan for two days now. Mostly I’ve been trying to drag heavy luggages up staircases, failing to use my credit card in most places (apparently Lawson’s is the only convenience store in Japan that will accept foreign credit cards), and of course trying to communicate with the citizens of Tokyo using a mix of mangled Japanese, English sounded out in Japanese syllables, and hand gestures.

Tomorrow I’m leaving for Japan. That’s right, I’m really going to Japan. Again. The first time I went to Japan, I was a naive almost-fourteen-year-old who went to Japan with her dad for her spring break vacation. Now, I am an idiotic twenty-year old who is going to be interning and living alone in Tokyo for two months. There’s a lot of differences between then and now and for some reason I thought this topic merited a blog post. So here it goes:

-This time, I am not recovering from a severe four-day bout of fever that nearly killed me. Things are looking good so far.

-Supposedly I know Japanese now. Somewhat. Kind of. A little bit. Probably not at the level that is needed. Okay, at least I can ask where the bathroom is now (last time, the waitress gave me a pitcher of water in response). おてあらいはどこですか？